Taste of Tuesday - Bites!

I rarely make up my own recipes because there are so many great cooking blogs, websites, and cookbooks out there. Usually I find recipes that look tasty, try them, and tweak them a bit if necessary to fit my family's tastes or to make them healthier.  Here are three recipes that needed little or no tweaking.  They are all delicious and easy enough for anyone to do.  I hope you try one, or all, of them!

The first is from a new blog I discovered via Pinterest.  It is for homemade pretzel bites.  Jillian and I made these this weekend and they were great.  It is a perfect recipe to make with kids.  We did some salty and some cinnamon sugar.  The recipe is easy to follow and works.  My only problem was that during the boiling step, some of my water boiled out, so the second batch ended up tasting a bit too much like baking soda.  Next time I'll add more water in as I continue to boil my pretzel bites.  We'll be making this one again soon! 

The second recipe is from Our Best Bites.  Kate and Sara come up with lots of great recipes, but this one is very unique.  It is for Brazilian cheese rolls, like the ones you might get at a Brazilian grill restaurant.  They are made with tapioca flour (or starch), which I found in bulk at Winco.  The batter comes together so quickly in the blender, and then you pour it into mini muffin tins.  Pop the pan into the oven and minutes later you will have puffy cheesy magic.  I think these would be great with any Latin-based meal.  I served them when we had some friends over for a Mexican potluck and they were a hit.

I have to credit Kyle with the next recipes.  He's been playing around with popcorn and I've been enjoying the results.  We have been making sweet and spicy popcorn for our game nights.  It is so good!  I also like that you can use olive oil instead of butter (I wouldn't use the nonstick spray called for in this recipe because I don't like the chemicals).  You can vary the spices depending on your preferences.  We've tried it with and without cinnamon.  I like it both ways.  This Sunday Kyle made some key lime popcorn based on this recipe.  He left out the graham crackers and didn't make it into a syrup, which made for a much lighter version.  Good choice, I think.  The salt, lime, and sugar taste great with the popcorn.  Next up, maple bacon popcorn and coconut curry popcorn.  I am a bit skeptical about those, but I'll give them a try!

Making new foods is a fun way to be creative and taste new things.  I'm trying to get the little veggies at our house to be brave and eat more veggies.  I'm doing this by serving three veggies at dinner (not all dinners, but a few times a week).  Then I ask them to choose two to eat. Tonight's choices were:  sauteed asparagus and mushrooms, spinach in our lemon pasta dish, and baby carrots.  I was impressed that both Jillian and Hayden chose carrots and spinach.  Kara chose carrots and carrots (that's cheating), and Kate tried them all and said "don't yike it" to three of them.  I, of course, ate them all. 

Happy and healthy eating!  Hope you have some delicious bites this week.  Tomorrow night I'm trying this recipe for dinner, just to keep my meat eaters happy.